The discos did not close, but they grew carpets. The champagne towers remained, though now people asked for the vintage. The famous "Endless Night" ballroom added a quiet corner with herbal tea and good lighting for reading.

The citizens—former boys and girls of perpetual summer—woke up one morning and realized they preferred sheets with a high thread count to sleeping on clouds. They began to invest in 401(k)s instead of love potions. They named their hangovers not "the price of magic" but simply "Tuesday."

But one autumn—without fanfare, without decree—Scoreland matured.

The King of Scoreland, who had worn the same velvet cape for a hundred years, held a press conference. He looked tired. He had bags under his eyes—actual bags, like luggage for all the nights he’d stayed up pretending.

The first sign was a single gray hair on the statue of the Harvest Queen. No one scrubbed it away. The second sign was a mortgage. The third, a quiet conversation about a knee that ached before rain.

And so Scoreland did not die. It did not become drab. It became earned .